The arena trembled after his charge—the transformation was now a truth with no escape.
Kim—the Death Tiger—lunged like a black lightning strike. His movement was not just an attack, but a decision: he would never again be anyone's tool. He lifted his gaze toward the crowd, and his stare was a siege itself: every eye that met his black right eye lost a fragment of life; every glance from his silver eye drained what remained of the possessed.
The first ranks before him withered away. Guards who clutched their spears found their voices vanishing, their limbs numbing, their stance collapsing as though the weight of the world suddenly crushed their bones. Not a single long scream was heard; the cries for help were severed by that tremor only nature knows—when life is drained drop by drop.
Zaro rose, trying to bind heads with his threads; but the threads flickered and evaporated as if woven from hollow air. He tried to retreat, only to feel his blood thinning from within, as though his lifespan was being ripped out of a clock. His face paled, his stance shrank into pure human fear. He soon collapsed to his knees, gasping in vain.
Mayra lifted her lyre, hoping to awaken her last notes; suddenly, her strings folded in on themselves, and the sound that once spread dread now faded into a distant whisper with no echo. The crowd could not even hold on to the knowledge of how to scream, for their very existence was unraveling: one ribcage after another ceased to beat.
Drake, the giant famed for his charge, hurled himself to cut me down—yet his motor system betrayed him. A hollow emptiness swallowed him; the strength in his legs melted away like ice in a gentle flame. He fell with a violent cry, and silence armed itself over him. Felix tried to slither away like a serpent, but my eyes snared him like a trap; I watched him freeze, then drop motionless.
The audience, once ravenous for spectacle, had no exit. The gates of escape shut in a moment of terror; those who tried to run left behind only the echo of shoes halting. This was not a battlefield but a field of extinguished life: faces turned into masks without sound, hands searching for breaths that would not return.
On the balcony, the king stood screaming, trying to summon his ancient power, straining to rise with his old magic:
"Heart of the blade! Gather my shards!"
But no echo answered.
The monitor before him widened with a cold light, spelling out:
> "System Warning: Skill 'Show Me Death' — Immediate suspension of forced system override. Cause: Hazardous usage (ocular hemorrhage for user exceeding one minute)."
The answer struck like a clot in his chest: his tools were gone. The ancient rites he used to mock fates with had vanished from his hands. His thirst for control dissipated, his screams dissolved into a terrifying hush.
But Kim waited for no permission, no mercy. He kept his skill active—minute after minute—blood beginning to trickle from the corners of his eyes like thin red threads of fabric. Pain crept into his vision, yet clarity sharpened with each victim; every look stole another sovereignty from the collapsing world.
The great scream erupted when he turned toward the king himself. The king tried to wield his last defenses, but the Tiger's eyes hunted his pride like wolves. The king looked at his head, his hands, at the crowd he could no longer see, then shouted: "No—this is impossible!" It was the final word before his power withered. His shadow shrank, and the light of his voice dimmed into a bitterness every witness tasted.
After one full minute of activating the skill, the grip of the eyes trembled at a breaking point. A final warning appeared on a hanging screen from the stadium sky:
> "Attention: Continued 'Show Me Death' beyond one minute causes advanced ocular hemorrhage to the user. Recommendation: Immediate cessation to preserve partial/total eyesight."
Now blood streamed from the edges of his eyes, but something else was born: the hemorrhage did not weaken him, it ignited a festival of resolve in his chest. He knew every second more would cost him a portion of sight—but each second also crowned him further as master of the field. Names fell, titles dimmed, and a city in silence surrendered.
When the noise subsided, the arena bore scars that would never fade: dozens fallen, attendants, the king's guards, and a crowd emptied of its voice. The king himself, the pillar who believed he was above all, was now only a shadow writhing on the ground—a mere memory of a power already buried.
With familiar coldness, the system sent him one last message through the hovering screen:
> "King's Adoption: Complete. Official title: Death Tiger. Subsequent sub-skill development now available."
He had lost part of his sight, yet the Death Tiger rose amid the wreckage—not screaming in triumph, but declaring the verdict of a new reality:
"The world is free of their game. Now… we'll see who is allowed to return and rebuild what my eyes have destroyed."